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What
to do when you've gone on a binge

One of the problems with a high-fat
diet is that the fat you eat is more easily stored by your body
as fat. Research studies have found that the human body will
fairly quickly increase the rate it burns carbohydrates as fuel when the
person overeats carbohydrates. Overeating fat, on the other hand, appears
to cause a similar adjustment to the body's fat burning, but that change
seems to take place much more slowly.

What
that means, practically speaking, is that a binge of high-fat foods like
you might see over the holidays will cause what the scientists term a "positive
fat balance" for several days after the binge, before the body starts
to burn the excess fat more quickly. And unless those excess calories get
burned off, you know what happens: long term weight gain. Scientists with
the University of Wisconsin, in a recent article in The American Journal
of Clinical Nutrition (2007;85:109-16), wondered if low to moderate
intensity exercise might not help speed the body's adjustment to higher
fat burning and designed a study to find out.

Ten
women were recruited to participate in the study who were between the ages
of 18 and 39, not obese (BMI between 20 and 30), otherwise healthy, and
having a fairly sedentary lifestyle of less than 3 hours per week of low
to moderate intensity exercise. For four days before the inpatient part
of the study, the women were provided a low fat diet (30% of calories from
fat) which was designed to maintain their weight. They were also instructed
not to exercise for those four days.

Four
days were then spent as inpatients in a special room designed to measure
the amount of calories burned by the single human living inside. While
inpatients, each subject was fed a high-fat diet (50% of calories from
fat) that again was designed to maintain their weight, even though twice
per day the subjects exercised on a stationary bicycle until they burned
150 or 300 calories, as randomly assigned by the study. Several times per
day the subject's urine was tested to measure the amount of nitrogen in
the urine, an indicator of the amount of fat the body is burning. As the
researchers suspected, the low intensity exercise increased the rate of
fat burning when the women switched to a high fat diet - and that more
exercise caused an even higher rate of fat burning.

What
this means for you

Regular exercise is critical for good health.
A healthy diet is just as important. Still, the holidays come
around or birthdays or other special occasions, and we go a little
crazy at the buffet table or can't say no to a second piece of cheesecake.
What do you do? Get back to your regular, healthy way of eating and get
a little extra exercise - say, an extra 30 minutes' walking twice a day
- for the following day or two to help your body's metabolism
kick into gear to burn off the excess fat you've eaten.